A Way of Life, Like Any Other

by Darcy O'Brien

  As it happened, three names survived our pruning of the dead, Marshall Marshall, John Ford, and my mother. I entered her Roman address. Marshall Marshall was an automobile salesman who had interested my father in the John Birch Society. Marshall had been divorced by Colonel Jacob Ruppert’s granddaughter and had got himself baptized a Catholic in consequence. My father told me that it was Marshall’s discovery that a recent failure of the cranberry crop was a communist plot to undermine the integrity of the Thanksgiving dinner. This seemed to me doubtful, but my father said that he always respected another man’s beliefs. The addresses and telephone numbers for Marshall and Ford proved accurate. How would I like to meet Marshall Marshall? I replied that I would be delighted to meet him and that I had an interest equally lively in meeting John Ford, whom I took to be the greatest genius in the history of the American cinema and whose The Long Voyage Home, which I had seen at the age of eight, had affected me so deeply that I had wept over it.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a man crying,” said my father, and tears formed in his eyes and dripped down his face. I didn’t know what I had said.

  I asked him what was the trouble, and he said that he had been thinking about what a foolish thing it had been for “your Ma” to break up the family; he had offered her anything she had wanted; he had given her a separate bedroom, he had had the idea that they could open a dude ranch together and invite old friends from the pioneer days of Hollywood up to tell stories, sing songs, and entertain the guests generally. People from Omaha didn’t know what they were missing. Or he and Mother could have done an Osa and Martin Johnson thing, bring back films of bushmen or some of the Peruvian or Bolivian Indians who were on dope all the time and syndicate it for television. It was his ambition to have a ranch again some day, with a place to hang up his spurs. There wasn’t room here, he couldn’t unpack. His old black saddle with the silver trimmings was out in the garage under newspapers, maybe I had noticed it. We could drop in on Marshall at the Chevrolet agency.

  13

  SANTA MONICA

  WE ENCOUNTERED Marshall Marshall at a propitious moment on the floor of the display salon, just as he was completing the sale of a Bel-Air. As was his practice, he offered as a bonus to the automobile contract a free copy of the collected speeches of Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, and a year’s free subscription to American Opinion, organ of the Society. In this instance the customer refused the bonus, shoving the speeches aside and threatening to back out of the deal.

  “I came here to buy a Chevrolet,” he said, “not a crackpot philosophy.”

  I admired the good humor with which Marshall accepted the rebuff. He was like the street evangelist who endures cheerfully the boorish ignorance of the unsaved. Marshall was a big, tall fellow, overweight, with the face of a middle-aged cherub and the proud bearing of a former Marine Corps officer. We repaired with him to a coffee shop. He and my father ordered apple pie and coffee, I elected cherry pie and a glass of milk.

  Marshall asked me about my studies, his voice soft yet manly, with the pleasant slow vowels and muffled consonants of his native North Carolina. He was especially interested in how American history was being taught at my high school. He had been a history teacher himself, before he had got into the automobile business, and he was still a historian and always would be. Were they emphasizing that America was a Republic, not a democracy? I said I was uncertain of the distinction, and he explained it to me, forcefully, logically, and with impressive citations from the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. He praised Senator McCarthy, comparing him to Patrick Henry, John Calhoun, Henry Clay, Robert E. Lee, Attorney General Palmer, and St. Stephen, the first martyr, who, Marshall had just learned from a book loaned him by his parish priest, had been stoned to death for his beliefs. When I asked Marshall whether he thought that Senator McCarthy’s methods were sometimes excessive, he cautioned me, his big round face radiating benignity and faith, that the cost of liberty was always high. I did not mention that I had written Edward R. Murrow a fan letter complimenting him on his McCarthy broadcasts, expressing my hope that Murrow would succeed in driving that alcoholic perverted psychopath to an early grave. Marshall was too sincere for argument.

  He was pleased with the sale of the Bel-Air. It would mean at least thirty dollars to him, and it placed him two cars ahead of his nearest competitor at the agency for salesman of the month. When my father abandoned us for a moment, saying he had to go pump the bilge, Marshall leaned forward and said to me in confidential tones, that my father was the greatest man he had ever met, and that it was his ambition, once he had built up sufficient savings from Chevrolet sales, to produce a motion picture version of the life of General MacArthur, with my father as the star. It would get my father’s career rolling again, he said, and stand as a lasting tribute to two great Americans.

  “Do you have a lot of contacts in the industry, Mr. Marshall?” I asked.

  “You don’t need contacts for a thing like this,” Marshall said. “What you need is dedication. I know some people at Armed Forces Radio, they are very fired up about this project. I call it Project Return. If you break the code, you see it gets in what General MacArthur said about returning to the Philippines and your father’s return to the screen. It can’t miss.”

  “I have some industry contacts myself,” I said. “I know a man who never lost money on a picture.”

  “That’s quite a record,” Marshall said. “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know that I should give out his name, but he told me some of his secrets. I’d be happy to pass them on to someone like yourself.”

  “Let’s get right on this,” Marshall said. “I learned in the Marine Corps that procrastination is the thief of time. You and your Dad come over to my place tonight. I’ll fix supper and we’ll have a background and general strategy planning session.”

  When my father returned, we set the meeting back a week because Dad said he had a lot of paperwork and it would take him several days of going at it head to head before he could get out from under. My father paid the check with a hundred-dollar bill and pressed a dollar tip directly into the waitress’s hand:

  “This is for you, dear. That’s some apple pie.”

  Marshall had sold my father the DeSoto and they had got into the habit of shooting the breeze when the DeSoto needed an oil change. When DeSotos became extinct, Marshall had switched to Chevrolets. There was less prestige but steadier sales. The transition had been rough on him because his wife had dumped him at the time, and he had to adjust to bachelorhood and Chevrolets all at once. She was one of those flighty women, my father said. Kind of a socialite. Well old Marsh hadn’t been social enough for her. There had been a kid. He lived with his mother now but Marsh was saving up to send him to Notre Dame one day. Marsh had taken the divorce pretty hard, but then he got very sincere about politics and he found the Church. A convert can have a strong faith. They were all converts in the old days, Jesus Himself was a convert, you could say. Marsh sort of looked up to my father as a father, and my father was glad to pass on to him some of the lessons life had taught, such as how to keep punching. Marsh had his head above water now and he had a great future if he would keep an even keel. He was working out a deal for my father for a new Chevrolet without ash trays, sun visors, arm rests, or plush carpeting that nobody needed. You had to order special from the factory and it paid to know somebody. He helped Marsh out with advice and Marsh helped him. The politicians called it logrolling.

  We started brainstorming after the meatloaf. Marshall had a big coffee pot so we could keep at it all night if we had to. He showed us the story treatment he had worked up:

  General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was the greatest patriot this Republic has known since the late and great General Robert E. Lee. We see him smashing the Red Bonus Marchers. We see him rescuing our Filipino brethren. We see him teaching the broken back Japanese how to govern themselves without falling prey to the Red Russians and the Red Chinese. We
see him on the brink of saving the free world in Korea only to be done in by comsymp politicians whose names every patriot knows by heart. We see him mobbed by throngs in San Francisco. We see him addressing the weak-kneed Congress of the US. Dissolve to copy of US Constitution. A woolly head sets fire to the document and burns it up.

  I told Marshall that the story was impressive but that as a property it lacked the common touch. My industry contacts told me that the key to movie success was having your hand on the pulse of the people. I could see that it would be easier to do a picture on Harry Truman because everyone knew he washed his own underwear. People could identify with that.

  “Truman was a Red,” Marshall said.

  “That may be,” I said, “but he washed his underwear and he went for walks. And there was the story about him and Bess breaking the bed in the White House. People could identify with that, see what I mean?”

  “General MacArthur never did anything like that,” Marshall said.

  “Then we’ve got problems,” I said. “He must have done something. Didn’t he drink or gamble or fool around with women?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Well something. You’ve got to have that common touch. Even the old Greeks knew that. Oedipus wouldn’t have them standing in line for thousands of years if the hero didn’t actually sleep with his mother. Look at Hamlet, he’s no angel. Or nearer home take Gone With the Wind.”

  “Greatest picture of all time,” Marshall said.

  “Right. But look at Scarlett and Rhett. Naughty, right?”

  “You’ve got a point,” Marshall said.

  “Now who is the greatest hero of all time?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll tell you something. If I was making a picture about Jesus Christ, I’d play up the anger in the temple thing, the fainthearted thing in the Garden of Gethsemane. And I’d get a knockout to play Mary Magdalene. You see it? The human element. Now can’t you think of any little flaw in General MacArthur?”

  Marshall thought. He paced up and down. He started to sweat. Looking for flaws in General MacArthur was very painful for him. He couldn’t think of any. At last my father, who hadn’t been in the business for nothing, remembered that MacArthur’s uniform was often untidy. His cap was frayed, he rarely wore a tie, and he looked pretty wrinkled.

  “That wasn’t a flaw,” Marshall said. “That was his mystique.”

  “We’ll make it both,” I said. “It’s just what we need. We’ll show him having an argument with his wife: ‘Douglas, that uniform is a disgrace, Go out and buy yourself a new one.’ ‘Woman, I have no time for shopping. Manila has fallen.’”

  “The kid’s got imagination, Marsh,” my father said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Marshall said. “I’m coming around to you fellows’ point of view. It’s just that with such a great man, I wouldn’t want to do anything to tarnish the image. I’ve taken an oath on that. It’s a question of honor with me.”

  “There isn’t enough honor left in the world,” my father said. “It’s guys like you who keep this country great.”

  “Coming from you, Captain,” Marshall said, “that’s quite a compliment. You know you’re the only man I’d let play the General.”

  “Why don’t we sleep on it?” my father said. “No sense rushing into things. We could make these sessions a regular thing. Keep us on our toes.”

  Marshall was thrilled with the idea. But he hoped we wouldn’t go yet. He had received an abusive letter from his ex-wife that he needed my father’s advice on. My father was the only man he knew who could handle women. The letter questioned whether Marshall should be taken seriously as a human being. It said that in reality he was a baby, a totally irresponsible, selfish, self-seeking, self-deluded, pompous, puffed-up, and empty baby. As things were, he did little to inspire respect. If he thought she was accepting any shit shavings he happened to have left over from his larger pile, he was mistaken. He would have to come to terms with reality.

  “That kind of thing hurts,” my father said, “even when we know it’s just a dame blowing off steam. Don’t let it get you down. We’ve all been through it. I’ll have one more cuppa Joe before we shove off.”

  “I feel better just talking to you, Captain.”

  “You behind in the old alimony again?”

  He was. He didn’t know where the money went. My father told him to keep track of everything and save all his receipts.

  In the DeSoto I told my father that Marshall seemed very fond of him.

  “He’s a lonely fellow,” my father said. “I noticed his weight going up. He needs to get out into the fresh air.”

  “Do you think this picture will come to anything?”

  “You never can tell. He needs capital. The banks control everything these days. Some Wall Street lawyer. They tell us what to do and they never cleaned a stable. You can’t tell about these things. I never give up on anything. I liked what you said in there tonight. You got horse sense. You could walk into a board room right now and tell them where to get off. Between the two of us, son, you’ve got it up here and I’ve got the experience that nothing else can teach you, we could go places. Of course, poor old Marsh, he ain’t going nowhere, you know what I mean?”

  14

  BEL-AIR

  WE APPROACHED John Ford in the church parking lot after twelve o’clock mass, as he was being assisted into a black Thunderbird by his driver. Ford had often directed my father but, so my mother told me, had snubbed Dad for many years after an unfortunate incident in Shanghai, the particulars of which I never learned, except that my father was supposed to have abandoned Ford when the latter was in a condition requiring assistance. Preparatory to the encounter, my father had briefed me extensively, speaking of the great man with affection and respect, though it was Dad’s opinion that Ford ought never to have made The Grapes of Wrath: in so doing Ford had made himself, however innocently, a purveyor of communist-socialist propaganda. I offered that the film was nevertheless intensely moving and a piece of high cinematic art. My father said that this was just the trouble.

  I had rehearsed a speech, intending to deliver it at the earliest possible opportunity, to convey my admiration. But when my father greeted Ford as “old shipmate” and introduced me first as his uncle and then as his “son Salty, my manager, and a helluva first baseman, Jack, and a pretty fair dishwasher too,” I was made awkward by these encomiums and was able to express only the most conventional of greetings.

  Ford invited us up to his house for breakfast. As we followed the Thunderbird along Sunset into Bel-Air, my father showed signs of unease, saying that we could not stay long, that he would probably just have coffee, that he had some bills to pay and paperwork, that Ford was a busy man and we must not his abuse hospitality, but Ford would be of great help to me in my career and that I should show my stuff. What he meant by this advice I do not know, for as yet I had no career, nor had I the least intention of involving myself in the movies or anything remotely connected to showbiz. No child aspires to repeat the tragedy of his parents but must avert the compulsion to do so.

  The house was grand in the Spanish style, with a swimming pool and a tennis court, and it was strange to see my father there. His own house was by comparison a shack, yet I knew that Casa Fiesta had been more splendorous than this and that then my father could have invited Ford, now he could not. We sat in a great room by a fragrant eucalyptus fire, Ford and his wife, Mary, and I sipping bloody marys, my father tomato juice; then a fine big breakfast and afterwards coffee with Irish whiskey in it. I was grateful to Ford for pressing drink on me. I had begun to think my drinking days were over and had even thought of Anatol with a certain wistfulness. Of course my father disapproved, though quietly, for he said I had to make up my own mind about such things and here he seemed to wish to defer to Ford.

  “You didn’t make Admiral for nothing, Jack,” my father said.

  Around us were displayed the symbols and
tokens of Ford’s achievements, the Academy Award Oscars, film festival prizes, medals from this and that, honors bestowed by kings, queens, taoiseachs, and presidents. My father was very quiet and glanced often at his watch, a weighty piece with several dials which had been presented to him by a frogman. Ford was frail in body but lively in intellect. My father had briefed me that Ford was disinclined to wear underwear, and in fact never wore it, except under arctic conditions, and while I could not verify this, I noted that he was dressed in other ways casually, in loose-fitting trousers and safari shirt, with an ascot at the throat. Of his eyes I could detect very little. One looked out from behind a thick, dark lens, the other was covered by a black patch.

  When Ford was well into his coffee, he made some effort to take an interest in me, asking what was my favorite subject in school, and when I said English, he inquired which were my favorite English authors. I said Swift. Ford protested that Swift was not English but Irish, though a Protestant, and asked did I know the Drapier’s Letters. I did not, so he gave me a concise account of their matter and of the currency scandal that had occasioned them. He had Mary fetch the book, and he read out to me a few passages of the indignant prose, holding the print within an inch of his better eye.